counter-mind phenomenon: "English is a language intended strictly for communication. Japanese is primarily interested in feeling out the other person's mood, in order to work out one's own course of action based on one's impression."2 This difference in approach to language, in which it is seen as a virtual barrier to communicating what is really significant (one's subjective response), appears to be a side effect of Zen culture. As a Japanese critic recently observed, _A corollary to the Japanese attitude toward language might be called the "aesthetics of silence"---making a virtue of reticence and a vulgarity of verbalization or open expression of one's inner thoughts. This attitude can be traced to the Zen Buddhist idea that man is capable of arriving at the highest level of contemplative being only when he makes no attempt at verbalizations and discounts oral expression as the height of superficiality.3 _ Finally, Zen cultural forms use the nonverbal, nonrational powers of the mind to produce in the perceiver a complete sense of identification with the object. If a Zen art work is truly successful, the perceiver has no sense of "I" and "it." If reflection or analysis is required, the work is of no more use than a joke whose punch line needs explanation. One's mind must immediately experience something beyond the work. Even as the eye cannot see itself without a mirror, so it is with the mind. The inducing of introspection turns out to be a deliberate function of Zen art--the forcing of the mind past the surface form of an art work and into a direct experience of a greater truth. The Zen arts are, we realize at last, completely internalized. They depend as much on the perception of the viewer or participants as they do on any of their own inherent qualities. For this reason they can be sparing and restrained. (They also happen to be perfectly suited to a land that, over the centuries, has been as physically impoverished as Japan.) By using small- scale, suggestive arts that depend to a large extent on the special perception of the audience for their impact, Zen artists were able to provide immense satisfaction with only a minor investment of resources. It is rather like the relation of radio to television drama. Given an audience with a good imagination, a radio dramatist or a Zen artist can achieve the intended effect through suggestion. This is what Sir George Sansom had in mind when he remarked upon the